I've read quite a few negative reviews and heard nothing good from others for Tides, so I've skipped over it. I would recommend playing Rune Factory 3 if you choose just one. I started out with the original Rune Factory (I blindly preordered it and the strategy guide because I was such a fan of Harvest Moon back then) and never found the motivation to finish it, if that tells you anything. It seems like they grew better as time went on, however.

I definitely agree that Rune Factory 3 is the best, but I still really like Tides of Destiny.

What makes the games really special to me is how everything ties together. You want to grow crops so you can use them to create meals that will restore your HP in combat, or simply to sell. You want to craft better tools and weapons so you can catch bigger fish or kill deadlier monsters. You want to explore so you can find better materials for crafting or new locations to grow crops. (If you're thinking "but I don't want to do any of this!" then this is most definitely not the series for you.) It's the Harvest Moon formula, but improved since all the crafting and growing and ranching that you do feeds into the dungeon crawling and exploration, and vice-versa.

Tides makes a few missteps, like simplifying farming to the point where it's merely a (brief) chore rather than a rewarding activity in itself and locking away the ability to get married until you finish the main story (unlike Rune Factory 3 where marriage was perfectly integrated into the plot) but I still think the rest of the game holds up quite well. I also think the characters are a pretty neat bunch, though admittedly a step back from the lovable lunatics in Rune Factory 3.

Oh yes, one more thing: this is a port of a Wii game, and thus doesn't exactly look great. It's roughly equivalent to running the game in Dolphin: you get a higher resolution but the framerate is still locked at 30, and none of the assets have been altered.

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